Norwich City pulled out all the stops to entice Ondrej Duda to England – according to the father of the prospective Canaries’ loan signing. Duda will formally seal a short term deal to join City’s Premier League survival fight in the coming days, and could make his debut at home to Bournemouth.
Ondrej senior said “We agreed with Norwich in three minutes. Negotiations between the clubs were a bit more complicated because Hertha’s entire management was on tour in the US. In winter there is not much time to change the jersey. Norwich had to meet all the requirements, not just of the player, but also Hertha. In such a short transfer window, only the English teams are currently able to meet the financial requirements without any problems.
Norwich City, a club with limited resources
While the sales of Maddison and Josh Murphy undoubtedly saved the club from administration, it inevitably produced accusations of lack of ambition and prophecies of doom in terms of prospects on the pitch. However with little in the way of expectations but following some judicious bargain hunting that brought in the likes of Tim Krul, Emi Buendia and Teemu Pukki, Norwich City won the Championship title playing glorious football.
Of course, there will be some who will say that the club just got lucky and that having done so they should have gone down the Aston Villa route of throwing £100m or more at staying up, based on the false premise that Premier League money arrives immediately rather than in increments.
Dire state of Norwich City’s current season yet Norwich City is not worried
Norwich City are many points adrift of safety and they. are losing ground on premier league survival rapidly. Unlike Aston Villa who are more desperate to survive in Premier League, if Norwich City goes down they would have six key players on long term contracts, each of whom could bring in more than Maddison did. They would also have a bunch of quality youth players from the enhanced Academy with the benefit of game time at decent clubs under their belt, like Rocky Bushiri, Charlie Gilmour, Akin Famewo and Simon Power, as well as emerging talent like Daniel Adshead and Jordan Thomas. Most importantly the club would no longer be digging itself out of a financial black hole and would have money in the bank. Given the miracles that Webber was able to work with next to nothing, the club has faith that they would still have a decent budget to come back to premier league quickly.
Of course, there are many in Norwich City who still believe a financial stability is a false comfort. Even though Norwich City have stabilized financially, they have invested heavily in the Academy, both in terms of infrastructure and signing young talent. Add to that uncertainty of retaining the coach who is still well respected in England as well as Europe.
Ondrej Duda had been making headlines in German Bundesliga
Ondrej Duda is a Slovakia international and offensive midfielder who made a lightning start to the 2018/19 campaign. Duda was one of Hertha’s stand-out performers in Bundesliga, scoring 11 goals in 35 appearances, but had slipped down the pecking order during the 2019/20 campaign. Duda’s talents have been clear to those operating within the footballing circles since his emergence at Legia Warsaw. Duda possesses autonomy, he governs himself and doesn’t rely on words from his head coach for motivation.
What we hope…
It was inevitable that there were demands in some quarters for Norwich City to spend big money in an attempt to stay up, even though that would be in direct contravention of the blueprint that was put in place when Daniel Farke and Stuart Webber arrived in 2017.
While some premier league fans have already written off Norwich City to be top contender of relegation ( after Watford’s revival under Nigel Pearson), it remains to be seem if Ondrej Duda will have a say in that in coming months.
